The biggest news for voters’ quality of life this week is nothing to do with Keir Starmer’s Labour Party conference speech – nor anything else our politicians have said or done. The energy price cap has risen 2 per cent, bringing the average energy bill to £1,755 a year, almost £500 higher than it was four years ago. Ofgem statistics now show consumers are in a record £4.43bn of collective energy debt.
Food prices are also rising at the fastest pace since the beginning of last year, according to September figures. The cost of food and non-alcoholic drinks grew at a rate of 5 per cent this year – rising for the fifth month in a row in August – with the prices of milk, butter, beef and chocolate surging.
The cost-of-living crisis was all politicians could talk about a few years ago, around the time it reached a 41-year high of 11 per cent in October 2022. This was an era when even the libertarian Liz Truss-led government imposed price controls. Now, they’ve moved onto more exciting things, like AI, Donald Trump and deporting foreigners. You never hear them face the noble journalistic enquiry into the price of a pint of milk anymore. It’s as if Westminster, and its attendant media class, has grown bored of the literal bread and butter.
“I don’t know why we don’t just pick one subject and stick to it, and for me that has to be the cost-of-living,” said one Labour MP, confused by his government’s other preoccupations. “That’s what I hear from my constituents, and lots of them aren’t even from the poorest places. Struggling to afford a nice life is now such a common experience.”
The reality is that the prices of life’s essentials, such as food, heating and rent, have all been rising faster than wages and benefits. The flighty Westminster bubble may have an attention span frazzled by multiple news cycles a day courtesy of X, but the Tesco CEO Ken Murphy has revealed that consumers aren’t quite so quick to move on. He told reporters this week that shopping habits formed when inflation soared in 2022 – such as buying dine-in ready meals instead of eating out – have stuck. The subject line of one of Mumsnet’s most-trending recent threads was: “Am I just stuck in the past or are price increases recently out of control?” (The latter, ruled the matriarchal hivemind.)
“Last winter, I couldn’t afford to use the heating, it was just hot water that I used gas for,” said Brian, 57, a single dad on Universal Credit in Kingston-upon-Thames whose diabetes and obsessive compulsive disorder meant stopping work. “With gas going up, that means this year I’m going to have to try and use less hot water as well, just in order to cover the costs. I’m dreading it.”
He has also noticed cleaning and sanitary products are becoming more expensive, and has had to cut back on fresh food lately. “Food prices are creeping up, especially fruit and vegetables. In my local supermarket now you pay 50, 60 pence just for one apple. It’s ridiculous. I can’t afford to eat healthily,” he said when we spoke over the phone.
Politicians have “completely pushed the cost-of-living to one side,” in his view. “They’re all arguing about this immigration thing – I think they’re ignoring prices and bills and hoping we’ll forget about them and find something else to complain about… The government definitely needs to bring the cost-of-living back into the spotlight and do something about it longer-term, because it’s certainly not over.”
Brian takes part in Changing Realities, a collaboration of almost 200 parents and carers on low incomes across the UK with researchers at the University of Glasgow and Child Poverty Action Group, and told me many others have noticed rising prices and the government’s lack of attention.
“The everyday struggle to make ends meet, with high, and in many cases rising, costs for essentials including fuel, food and housing, is perhaps the biggest and most commonly experienced challenge families are facing,” said Ruth Patrick, professor of social and public policy at the University of Glasgow, who leads the project.
“Despite this, we currently hear far too little about it from our politicians and our media, who seem to think the cost of living crisis is last year’s news. Westminster needs to wake up.”
[Further reading: Bereaved families demand Government change “perverse” scrutiny of stillbirths]
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